


Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk

by rubygirl29



Category: Dresden Files
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-19
Updated: 2010-06-19
Packaged: 2017-10-21 22:18:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/230464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rubygirl29/pseuds/rubygirl29
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marcone is kidnapped and drugged. Harry has a potion for that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk

_**Fic: Dresden Files -- Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk NC-17**_  
This is my first _Dresden Files_ fic. I'm a little nervous about posting it, but here it is. The inspiration is the song _Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk_ sung by Rufus Wainwright.

 _Title: Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk  
Author: Rubygirl29  
Fandom: Dresden Files  
Characters: Harry Dresden, John Marcone, “Cujo” Hendricks.  
Genre: Hurt/Comfort  
Rating: NC-17 for language description of drug withdrawal  
For: [](http://hc-bingo.livejournal.com/profile)[**hc_bingo**](http://hc-bingo.livejournal.com/)  
Prompt: Drug Addiction  
Summary: Marcone is kidnapped and drugged. Harry has a potion for that. _

_  
**Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk**   
_

I don’t sleep well, even though I’ve strengthened the wards on my doors and replaced the old wood with steel. I hate it when demons come knocking in the night. There aren’t many beings of any sort who can break through the wards I’ve constructed. But that being said, I’m really only human, and I get tired and need sleep. Actually, I love to sleep; and for all the things I’ve seen and done, I don’t really dream all that much, thank God. Expression ... not sure I believe in religion, but ... forget that. I’ll talk about that later.

So, I was sleeping, my enormous bedmate/cat Mister, curled up on my feet keeping me warm on this late autumn night, when something shook the wards, translating into a hard knocking on my door. I struggled awake, threw on my robe and let my senses check it out. Not demonic. Human. Not Murphy.

More pounding, and a loud, deep voice yelling at me. “Dresden! Open up. It’s Hendricks. Dresden, open the fucking door! I know you’re in there, damn it!”

“Yeah, yeah. Just wait a second.” Hendricks? AKA Cujo -- at least that’s what I called him behind his back. He was the protector of John Marcone, AKA the man who owned Chicago. Marcone was a gangster, a businessman, a killer. Ruthless as a tiger, but also a man who had saved my life and whose soul I had gazed into and found deep sadness and secrets. He had looked into my soul without blinking; the only human being who had seen me down to the depths that left other people shaking and scared out of their wits. I didn’t want to know what he had seen.

“Dresden, I’ll shoot through these fucking locks if --”

“Stop foaming at the mouth, Hendricks.” It would serve him right if he sent bullets bouncing in all directions, but I disarmed the wards and made a big show of unlocking the physical latches. “Okay. Come on in.”

He did, hulking and menacing, but also clearly anxious. “Mr. Marcone. He’s gone.”

My heart plummeted. “Define ‘gone’.”

“Missing.”

“Some bodyguard you are, can’t keep track of your boss,” I commented.

“Fuck you.” Hendricks growled.

It was too dark in the room. “Flickum bicus,” I said and waved a hand, lighting candles. Hendricks paled. It was amazing how such simple magic could reduce a man his size to awe -- well, maybe not awe. Now that I could see him, I could see the bruise darkening his temple and what looked like blood scrawling down his neck. “What happened to you?”

“I drove Mr. Marcone to what was supposed to be a meeting with Tommy Z. --” He paused as my eyebrow rose. “He _used_ to be an ally until all this drug shit hit the fan. Ever since that Three Eye stuff, Mr. Marcone has been keeping a pretty tight rein on his --”

“Yeah, yeah. Yadda Yadda. So cut to the chase, Cujo.” I like my life, but I figured this might make Hendricks get to the real problem. A missing Mafia don was a serious concern. A missing John Marcone made me feel sick, like pain from a phantom limb.

“I was jumped,” Hendricks’ voice was thick with shame. “When I came to, Mr. Marcone was gone. I got this.” He held out a bloody handkerchief. “You can use this to track him, right?”

I took it in my fingers, held it to my nose. The scent was fresh, the blood still damp. Anybody else would have told Hendricks to go to the police. Yeah, they’d work hard to find a gangster they’d been trying to put in prison for the last fifteen years. I couldn’t take this to Murphy unless magic was involved -- right now, it was just one human abducting another. “I’ll try,” I said. “Wait here.” There was no way I was going to let him into the laboratory. I did, however, give him some aspirin.

^*^*^*^*^*^*^

It was a damp, chilly miserable night that made me hunch my shoulders inside my black leather duster. Hendricks was at my heels as we hurried through the industrial docks on the outskirts of the city. Streetlights flickered, whether or not it was due to my presence or some other disturbance, I couldn’t say. I didn’t sense other supernatural presences. The lights on the ships at the docks remained steady, but dim as the light strengthened in the east.

“This way,” I said. Hendricks and I halted in front of an abandoned warehouse, rusty and run down. But the lock on the door was new. Hendricks reached for his gun. Of course he did. I sighed, held up a hand with my lock picks in it. “Do you always have to make noise?” I asked. It was a simple mechanism. Lock picks had been around for centuries. No problem. I twitched the pick, felt the tumblers give, and jerked the hasp down. The door creaked open. I held out my hands, palms flat as I checked for wards. None. This was a human crime. There was a faint chill against my skin. Death had been here. I leaned against the rusty steel siding.

Hendricks pushed me aside, his gun drawn, sweeping it across the field of vision like a SWAT team officer. “Clear,” he said. I went in. The warehouse was empty.

“Dresden!” Hendricks called me over to where he was kneeling by a dark bundle. I cursed and went to him. Clothes, just clothes. An expensive Armani suit, dark topcoat, white shirt, silk tie. Shoes, socks. No blood. Nothing. They had stripped him and left his clothes for us to find.

“I think you have to call the police,” I said.

“You call,” Hendricks said in a deadly quiet voice. “I’ll find him.”

^*^*^*^*^*^*^

Two months later without a sign of him or clues to where Marcone was, I nearly tripped over his body on my doorstep. I thought he was dead. He looked dead. His hair was filthy, his skin dark with dirt. I touched his shoulder and nearly jumped back. His skin was cool, but he was breathing with small shallow puffs that scarcely raised his chest.

I opened the door, disarmed the wards and dragged him inside. He was wrapped in a rough, tattered blanket. A piece of paper fell out when I pulled one side of it back. I touched it tentatively. Just paper and a cryptic comment. _He’s of no use to us now._

I’m not a doctor, but I’ve had enough experience with rudimentary first aid that I didn’t call for an ambulance just yet. I risked electricity (and lit a few candles just in case) to see exactly what I was dealing with.

A dishpan of water and a gentle washing later, I discovered that what I had first thought was dirt, wasn’t. Marcone had been beaten regularly and savagely. And as I passed my hands across him, I felt a chill like cold water running beneath his skin. A spell? I hadn’t sensed it otherwise. I looked closely at his arms. Needle tracks like a junkie’s marred the pale skin.

What in the name of Hell had they done to him? I needed back-up and Marcone needed protection. I called Hendricks.

“What did you find?” he asked sharply.

“A package on my doorstep. Get over here now.” The phone sputtered static and I hung up. Knowing Hendricks, he’d be here fast. He’d called me nearly every day over the last two months to see if I had heard anything, found anything, conjured anything. The police, even Murphy, after expending manpower and time, had given up after six weeks. _”He’s wearing cement overshoes,”_ they had said. Aside from investigating a few John Does, they had written Marcone off.

That done, I continued working on cleaning him up. Jesus, but he was thin; his muscular frame had been decimated by near-starvation. I stripped off every stitch of clothing he wore, which wasn’t much -- a dirt-gray wife-beater and equally filthy boxers. I put him into a pair of sweatpants and wrapped him up in a clean blanket while Mister meowed and wove his way around my legs, sniffing suspiciously at the rags on the floor. I lifted Marcone’s eyelid. His pupils were huge, black. Of course, he was drugged. Why else the track marks? The question was, what kind of drugs? Or was it a potion that was making me feel those ripples of cold under his skin? As soon as Hendricks showed up, I’d find out.

By the time Hendricks arrived, Marcone was starting to shake with chills. Sweat was pouring from him, so much that the sheets and sweatpants were soaked. My apartment’s lack of heat wasn’t helping. I started a fire -- simple really once you took technology out of the equation and replaced it with magic. I was just about to drag John closer to the heat when Hendricks shook the wards.

I disarmed them and Hendrick grabbed the blanket and lifted Marcone as if he had the weight of a feather, then settled the blankets around him. I could see his eyes cataloging the hurts that had been done to his boss. Whatever flaws Hendricks possessed, I was willing to forgive him for the look in his eyes and the gentleness in his big hands. “What’s wrong with him?” he asked.

“Other than he’s been beaten and half-starved, drugged and left for dead, I don’t know. But I’m going to find out. Stay here and don’t touch anything that you don’t understand. I’ll be downstairs ... consulting. And I need one more thing.” I took a deep breath and went into the kitchen where I kept a small medical kit, including a scalpel. I got a clean white handkerchief from a supply I kept on hand.

“What are you doing?” Hendricks glowered at me. “Magic?”

“Something like. Don’t kill me,” I said and took one of John’s cold hands in mine. He was shaking in my clasp. “Hold him.” Hendricks huge hands closed with gentle strength over Marcone's wrist, stilling the tremors. I made a small quick cut across the pad of his thumb, then touched the handkerchief to the wound until it had soaked up the oozing blood.

I left Hendricks standing guard and went down to my workroom. I summoned my consultant. “Bob!” I knocked on the skull. “Bob, wake up. There’s an emergency.”

I could swear it looked like the skull yawned. The eyes emitted a sullen glow, then he spoke in that insufferably snooty British voice. “Really, Harry, must you always wake me in the midst of dreaming of blonde twins?” He sounded put out. Too bad for him.

I snorted. “I’m not going to renew your subscription to _Bodacious Babes of the Beach_ if you don’t work.”

“Harry, you wouldn’t.” There is nothing more pathetic than an wounded spirit.

“I need help. I need to know what is in this. What kind of potion or drug." I held the handkerchief to the skull’s nasal cavity.”

“Don’t the police have ... what do they call it ... a forensics laboratory?”

“This is magic,” I said. I waved the handkerchief and the skull shuddered. “Harry, this is very bad.”

“You’re telling me,” I said. “I can feel it under his skin.”

“Whose skin?”

I took a breath. “Johnny Marcone’s.”

Bob sniffed. “The drug lord is now a junkie? How poetic.”

Anger surged through me. “That _junkie_ has saved my life! I owe him!” It was an effort to keep my voice from shaking. “He’s a friend more than an enemy, and he’s dying up there. So stop whining like a spoiled child and help him!”

“Well, if you put it like that.” Bob inhaled. “Mmm. It’s strong. A human drug like morphine combined with a potion distilled into an elixir. How was he given this?”

“Mainlined.” Silence from Bob. I sighed. “Injected.”

“By stars and stones! And he’s still alive?”

“Barely.”

“Well, he won’t be for long. First, you must counteract the elixir. Then you’ll have to deal with the other drug. Either one can kill him.”

“Tell me what I need.”

“You have to give him something to remind him of life, the strength to endure the pain, the courage to fight the addiction. And hope.” The eye sockets went dark, for all the world like Bob had closed a door.

I gathered together the simple bases. I used my imagination for this one, probably investing a bit more in it emotionally than I should. Chocolate milk, for the sweetness of life, a wisp of cigarette smoke to represent addiction, a pinch of iron filings for strength, a tune captured by moonlight, a ray of perfect light for hope and finally, a shredded dollar bill (Hey, my coffers were in the red), to remind John of his past.

Bob returned and told me what else I needed; the magic that would invest the physical substances with power and magic. Thaumaturgy has its source in the heart and strength of the wizard; from emotion, faith and desire. From need, want and love. “Thank you, Bob. Go back to sleep,” I said.

“But .. but --”

“Go.” There are some things a man has to do in private. He went back into the skull muttering something about me being an ingrate,

I closed my eyes and thought of John, of lives saved, of lives lost. Of anger and pain and the tiger-soldier I had seen in that searing soulgaze we had shared. I spoke to the tiger, calling on his savage spirit, his wild strength, his beauty. I drew on the power of the warrior, and on that last shadowy part of John that he kept hidden. And then, like the power of lightning, I felt the magic coursing through me and into the potion. It glowed brightly, blue and then green as old money -- the color of John’s eyes. I waited for the glow to fade, then strained the potion into a plastic squeeze bottle.

“I’ll bring you new reading material, old friend.”

A sniff came from the skull. “Fine. None of that _Twilight_ crap. Sparkly vampires. Bah!” And that was all he said.

Upstairs, Hendricks literally had his hands full. The drugs were wearing off and Marcone was thrashing and fighting his way to consciousness. He had vomited. The sour stench filled the room. His eyes were wild, red-rimmed, and unseeing. Periodic spells of cramps convulsed his body. He was fighting against Hendricks, and he would fight against me.

“Don’t be a wuss,” I told Hendricks sharply. “Hold him down!”

Hendricks shot me a murderous look, but my insults got the job done. He held Marcone ruthlessly as I dribbled a bit of the potion at a time into his mouth. He gagged, shoved my hands aside and moaned, curling his body against a fresh onslaught of cramps, tearing away from Hendricks’ grip like rotten rope parting.

 _“Keep him still!”_ I ordered. “If he doesn’t drink this, he’ll die.” I moved to support John’s head and neck as Hendricks held tight. I squeezed a few more drops into his mouth and remembered a trick (not magic) my father had used to get me to take my medicine when I was little. I stroked down the hard cords of John’s throat, feeling the muscles tense against my fingers, and then miraculously relent. He swallowed. I did it again and again until my fingers ached. It took nearly half an hour, but at the end, I could feel the spasms dying away and his shivering diminish to periodic shudders.

Hendricks looked exhausted. “What was this? What did this to him?” he asked.

“Drugs. Part magic, part heroin or morphine. But mostly magic. The potion is an antidote to the elixir, but not the heroin. He’ll have to detox from that.”

“He can’t go to a hospital,” Hendricks said. “He’s not safe.”

I had to agree. “I don’t know how to deal with the drug addiction,” I admitted.

“I know a doctor. He’ll help.” Hendricks stood up and stretched out his back. “I’ll take watch. You stay with Mr. Marcone.” He bent and lifted John’s body from my arms and laid him on the bed. “I need air,” he said. I nodded, unwarded the door and opened it. I dug in my pocket and handed him an amulet. “This will let you pass through the wards for three hours.”

After he had gone, I washed John once again and left him naked. I covered him with a clean blanket. Suddenly exhaustion overtook me like I’d been hit by a bus. I lay down next to him, curving the warmth of my body around his, aware of the ribs beneath my hand, the knobby bones of his spine, and the small shivers that still made him tremble every now and then. But his skin was warm; the touch of ice beneath it had melted with the potion. I closed my eyes, settled deeper into my mattress and fell asleep.

^*^*^*^*^*^*^  
Dawn came up like thunder. Really. A storm rolled in off the lake and the thunder shook me awake. Storms leave a nasty taste in my mouth since the Victor Sells case. The knowledge that all that power just there for the taking left my skin crawling and my hair rising on my neck. My arm was still draped over John’s chest. He was so still that for a moment I thought he had slipped away during the night, but his skin was warm and when I moved, his breath hitched in his throat. I waited to see if he’d wake, and not certain if I wanted him to or not. Probably be better if he didn’t, considering the withdrawal.

Of course, contrary son of a bitch that he was, he woke up. He sat upright, gasped, then fall back with a groan and curled up, unmoving, but breathing harshly. I slid out of bed and padded over to the kitchen, thought brewing up a pot of coffee, and decided if Marcone was going to have anything, tea had a better chance of staying down. I rummaged through the cupboards, finally finding a box of teabags I kept on hand for nervous clients. If he survived this, Marcone would probably have Hendricks kill me for the insult, but after last night, I thought maybe he would be less inclined to knock me off.

I held my hands over the mug in a simple fortification spell. The small surge of power would keep the tea warm. I carried it over to the bed. The tension in John was palpable, and I knew this was a man who could do serious damage if startled, just like the wounded tiger I had seen in his soul. I set the mug down, not wanting to add a scald to my other woes. I reached out gingerly. Before I could even touch his shoulder, Marcone’s arm lashed out, catching me on the shoulder. If he’d connected with a less sturdy part of my body, like a rib, I’d have been down.

I caught his hand. “Hey, Marcone!”

“No!” He shrank away from me, his face turned, his voice almost a sob. “Don’t touch me ... God, don’t ...”

“John. It’s okay. You’re safe. It’s Harry. You’re safe here with me, okay?”

“Harry?” His eyes focused. They were bloodshot, the green irises faded with fatigue and shadowed with pain. He licked his dry lips. “I need something. Give me something.”

“Sorry. All I’ve got it tea.”

“You’re a lying bastard.” He coughed. “Shit. I feel like crap.”

“The good news is you’re not dead. The bad news is withdrawal’s a bitch. Here.” I held out the mug of tea.

Marcone looked at it and gave a short laugh. “Just shoot me now.” But he let me hold it to his lips. His own hands were shaking. “Withdrawal from what?” He coughed again, swore, and I wondered if the beatings had cracked a rib or caused some kind of internal damage.

“You were injected with something, probably heroin with a good portion of magic added just to make it worse. I countered the magic, but the heroin? I’m afraid you’re on your own with that.”

“Cold turkey?”

“We can find a doctor with something to help you.”

“No more drugs.” He was starting to sweat and shake again.

“It might help,” I suggested.

“No!”

I looked at him, knowing that there were hours of agony ahead as the drugs left his body. “John, you know this isn’t cosmic payback or anything for ... um, the business.”

He opened one eye. “Not cosmic, but payback, nonetheless.”

Unfortunately, that made sense. “Maybe,” I admitted. “But whoever did it, also used magic, so maybe that was because of me. They knew they could get to me through you.”

“Christ, Harry. Watch your back.”

“Why, John. I didn’t know you cared.”

“Fuck you, Harry.” But his whisper died off into a moan. I waited until he opened his eyes again.

“You’re a silver-tongued devil, Marcone,” I laughed softly and supported the back of his neck as he drank a few sips of tea. He shoved the mug aside after drinking too little.

“I can’t,” he said. I managed to get a bowl over to him before he retched up what little he had swallowed.

It was going to be a long day.

^*^*^*^*^*^*^

I won’t go through the catalogue of the misery of dealing with drug withdrawal. If you want details, look it up online. It’s not pretty, it’s not easy on anybody. Hendricks returned with a bag of various medications, all refused by John. I finally dissolved some anti-emetics in water. Between us, Hendricks and I got enough down Marcone’s throat to quiet down his stomach and guts.

He shook, he swore, he wept as cramps twisted his muscles. It was odd to see Hendricks in the nursemaid role, washing the sweat and the stench from his boss. You couldn’t buy that kind of loyalty. Soldiers who had saved each other’s lives, who had been through hell together bonded like that. John, who could wield fear, could also empower love. _That_ was a revelation.

The worst lasted 72 hours. There wasn’t much I could do to help; healing was a powerful magic beyond my abilities. I could take some pain away, I could bring sleep; I couldn’t mend bones, close wounds or stop the physical effects of withdrawal. Finally, Marcone’s stubborn will and strong body purged the drugs out of his system, and he slept. Hendricks looked like he’d been through a war ... maybe we all had.

“Go home, Hendricks,” I said. “Get some rest and bring some clean clothes for him.”

“Will he be safe?”

I arched a brow. “He wasn’t kidnapped from my apartment. I have ways of guarding him that you can’t begin to understand.” I held out my hand. “Give me the amulet.”

He handed it over. “He better be safe, Wizard.”

“Yeah, yeah. Get out of here.” He left with a glower and a flick of his jacket that showed off the butt of his gun. All right, then.

When I was certain he had gone, I drew on my magic. I couldn’t heal Marcone, but I could weave a sleep spell. I kept it light, just leaving a small layer of protection in his mind, and when he was quiet, I went down to the laboratory and brewed a potion: Honey, lavender, the buzz of bees in a flowering meadow, the pale lucent blue of a summer sky, and the hush of breeze through leafy branches -- don’t ask how I captured that. I can’t tell you. You would want it all the time and the magic would disperse.

I infused the potion with emotion and courage, and with the hope of youth. I didn’t know what kind of childhood John had, but you didn’t grow into the kind of man he was if you had a happy family life.

Most potions are meant to be swallowed, but there are other means of dispersal: aerosol, inhalation, sprinkling, water balloon -- just joking, but you get the idea. This one was an aromatic I warmed it in a copper bowl set over a votive candle. The aroma permeated the room, chasing the sourness and despair away, leaving a fresh, sweet herbal scent.

I waited and watched it work on John. The tension left him, his muscles eased and his hands relaxed, open and vulnerable. The lines on his face smoothed and he sighed. I wove another layer into the sleep spell. Then I sat in my chair with Mister curled on my lap and dozed. The potion worked on me, as well.

I woke to a whisper of my name. “Harry?”

Marcone was conscious. He looked terrible; gaunt, pale, his hair pasted flat to his skull, the skin stretched taut over his cheekbones. But his eyes were calm, green. The pupils were no longer dilated by drugs.

“Yeah?”

“I’m hungry.”

I don’t think canned chicken soup was a staple in his house. He grimaced at the first taste, but ate nearly half of what I had dished out. His hands were still shaking, but with weakness, not the tremors of withdrawal.

He thanked me. He was the most polite mobster in Chicago. _Gentleman Johnny_ had earned his soubriquet. He closed his eyes and went back to sleep.

He slept a lot the next two days, waking enough for me to get him to the shower. He was too weak to stand, so I dragged out an old lawn chair for him to sit on. He showed remarkably little self-consciousness; or maybe he just went somewhere else in his mind as I washed him and shampooed his hair. He gave a soft moan as I worked in the shampoo, but didn’t speak.

Finished, I turned off the water and draped a towel over him, leaving him to dry himself while I got out sweatpants and a t-shirt.

“ _’Wizards do it with Spells’_?” Marcone’s lips twitched. “From one of your many admirers?”

“From Murphy.”

“Aha.” He pulled it over his head.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. Just _aha_.”

“Go back to sleep,” I said crossly.

“I’ve slept the clock round for two days. I think I can keep my eyes open for a few hours.”

“Fine. Here.” I shoved over my brown bag of paperback novels. “Read yourself silly. Some of us didn’t have those clock-round slumbers.” I sat in my armchair and closed my eyes. Silence.

“Harry, what happened to me?”

“Hendricks --”

“Hendricks is all right? He’s alive?”

He didn’t remember. I sighed. “You don’t think I’ve been the only one mopping your fevered brow?” I leaned forward. “He came to me asking for help the night you were taken. He looked for you for two months. He never gave up.”

“I pay him very well.”

I wasn’t about to point out that Hendricks could have taken the money and disappeared anywhere in this world. I think John knew that. “Anyway, all I know is that you went to talk to a guy named Tommy Z It was a trap. They jumped Hendricks and took you.”

“I don’t remember.” His eyes took on a haunted look. “They beat me. They locked me in a cage. They took everything.” He shivered. Reached for the blanket as if that could offer him a layer of protection that I couldn’t. “How did I end up here?”

I picked up the note that had been delivered with his body and handed it to him.

“They thought I would die?” John laughed. “So they dumped me on your doorstep? God, Tommy Z. was never the sharpest knife in the drawer. Instead, you saved me.”

I shook my head. “No. You were too damn stubborn to die. I just countered the magic and let you sleep.”

He sat, thoughtful for a few minutes. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. More soup?”

“No.”

“My culinary repertoire is somewhat limited,” I said.

“I don’t know why, but for some reason I have a taste for chocolate milk.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. I’d never had s spell linger like that. “Any cravings for cigarettes?”

It was John’s turn to give me a narrow study. “No ... why?”

“Just asking. For what it’s worth. I think you’re going to recover.”

“Good.”

“Yeah.” I got up, went into the kitchen and poured two glasses of chocolate milk.” I sat next to John on the couch. “So, to life?” I met his eyes, just a slight brush of a soulgaze. The tiger was sleeping.

“To magic,” John said and smiled as we clinked glasses.

 _  
**The End**   
_


End file.
